Cognizant Overtakes Infosys in North American Market!

Cognizant seems to slowly gaining the aura which Infosys has had for past decade or so – The consistency with which Cognizant has churned out high growth numbers over past few years, quarter on quarter, has been just amazing!

Even though Cognizant is one of the youngest IT services company among the elite group, they have managed to keep two paces ahead in growth. It is easier when you are comparatively a smaller size to log high rates, but Cognizant has maintained it even as they have grown into a behemoth.

So, just how fast has Cognizant grown ?

Cognizant overall revenue is expected to be above Wipro in June Quarter – They had already surpassed Wipro’s North American revenue in June 2009 itself. Cognizant’s share from US market is also higher than Industry average – Cognizant’s 78% vs Industry average of 65%.

The biggest surprise though for this quarter was Cognizant overtaking Infosys in terms of their North American revenue. Infosys’ revenue from North American market stood at $1,020.5 million, while Cognizant’s revenue from the same geography touched $1,070 million.

Till now, Infosys has been a pole bearer of Indian IT Industry worldwide – They have mostly stood tall and have been away from any kind of controversies and mis-doings. Infact, when Narayan Murthy & Nandan Nilekani were at the helm, Infosys looked like nothing could go wrong with them – but last few months have been some of the worst months in Infosys history. Falling revenue growth rates and power struggle at the top seems to have taken away the cloak of invincibility from Infosys. They are clearly struggling!

With K. V. Kamath being appointed at the helm now, it has to been seen whether he can create the same magic with Infosys as he did with ICICI Bank in past.

Till then, it seems the baton of being the shining star of Indian IT Industry has been passed to Cognizant!

Arun Prabhudesai is founder / chief editor at trak.in. He jumped the Entrepreneurship bandwagon in early 2008 after a long 13 year stint in I.T Industry. You can follow him on twitter @trakin and Facebook.Arun’s Google+ Profile

umm its quite interesting.Lets wait and watch if cognizant would ever overtake infosys.Its just a small setback.For a company as big as Infosys, i think they will make a strong comeback.Growth of infosys is better when taken in net value than taken in percentage.Its just a mere hype being created that cognizant is growing fast and overtakes infosys etc.Infosys has its own place and i am confident that the changes will yeild to better growth.

After Thomas Friedman had published “The World is Flat”, every US firm wanted to do business with Infosys! However, now it must change its conventional approach towards the Industry.

Moreover, there is no differentiation from competitors. There is nothing much that Infy can boast of (apart from the gigantic structure)!.

Infosys never did any relevant acquisition in past, which has been a major motivation towards success for companies like TCS and HCL (acq Axon lately)

Six years ago, Infosys’ revenues were 2.5 times Cognizant’s but in the latest quarter, Infosys is ahead by only a few %age in India. Faster revenue growth also helped Cognizant close the gap on operating profit.

Infosys has been moving slowly like a fat turtle, ensuring that it must move; but i believe, it has no risk appetite.